Non Voip phone service. Old time phone landline service. Does it exist anymore?

[ricleo2]

I have AT&T for my local phone that is a landline. I do not use an internet connection to use my phone. Every so often I call them up and see if I can get a cheaper plan from them. I do not use almost any of the services that I pay for. They always claim I have the cheapest plan. It is over 80 dollars. Are they lying to me? Is there a cheaper alternative from them? Can I get another company for my landline? Thank you.

 

[pcgeek11]

My wife had one up until 4 months ago when she finally realized that she can transfer the number over to the VOIP Phone we already had in our bundle. She is really attached to this phone number as we have had it for 25 years. But its done now and ATT will not get any more of my money.

 

[balloonshark]

Frontier wants $44 with taxes and fees for a landline where I live. I had Vonage VOIP for $42.

I just ported my Vonage number for free to another roll your own VOIP and it should cost me about $7 a month since I'm a light user.

 

[sdifox]

I have AT&T for my local phone that is a landline. I do not use an internet connection to use my phone. Every so often I call them up and see if I can get a cheaper plan from them. I do not use almost any of the services that I pay for. They always claim I have the cheapest plan. It is over 80 dollars. Are they lying to me? Is there a cheaper alternative from them? Can I get another company for my landline? Thank you.

LoL AT&T, how may we rape you.

Just switch to voip already.

 

[esquared]

LoL AT&T, how may we rape you.

Just switch to voip already.

Buy an Ooma for 72.00 (after coupon).

Amazon.com : Ooma Telo VoIP Free Home Phone Service. Affordable Internet-based landline replacement. Unlimited nationwide calling. Low international rates. Answering machine. Option to block Robocalls : Electronics

Amazon.com : Ooma Telo VoIP Free Home Phone Service. Affordable Internet-based landline replacement. Unlimited nationwide calling. Low international rates. Answering machine. Option to block Robocalls : Electronics

www.amazon.com

Calls in US are free, you only pay the tax required by your state and city, which varies.
Mine is around 6.00 a month, in a high tax state.

I've had mine since 2014, without issue.

 

[JEDIYoda]

My mother had her land line for over 50 years! It was the one number all us kids could call and know that there was someone on the other line who cared!! When mom passed about 4 years ago the line was retired and now somebody else has that number!!

 

[Red Squirrel]

It definitely does still exist, at least in my region anyway. There are less and less customers on it but our switch is still chugging along since the late 70's.

I've worked on our distribution frame and seen more "out" orders than "in" orders though. A lot of people also getting naked DSL, where it's just a connection straight to DSLAM. It's kinda sad to see the service slowly die out, but at same time I can't blame people, with cells, it's just an unnecessary cost to have two phones. I had one for a while but cancelled too. I felt I would miss having a "desk phone" and was going to look into voip options and I have yet to do it. So I'm doing fine without. I may still want to play around with voip at some point though.

I've worked a bit on the POTS system myself at work, mostly cross connecting customers to the switch/dslam at the frame which looks like this:

I don't work on it much anymore though, we used to have a dedicated guy and I'd go do the orders if he was not in but now the field techs do it as there's not enough orders for a dedicated person. I work a bit on the software side of the switch though, mostly surveillance to make sure it's performing well.

 

[pcgeek11]

When I was a kid everyone had party lines and the phone number was only four digits.

You had to remember what your ring code was like 2 longs and a short. like morse code.

Serious.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I work for the phone company so I have access to all the landline switches. For the longest time I had a landline at home as I figured it kind of makes sense to have the service I support. But as years went by I realized I was hardly using it so got rid of it. That and when we got fibre it got ported over to the fibre service so it was not on our switch anymore anyway. When I was doing frame orders (cross connecting customer cable pairs to switch line equipement) I had more outs than ins as well. Businesses still use landlines though. Centrex etc.

Still lot of residential users with landlines but like maybe 1/10th of say, the early 2000's. Our phone book is basically a magazine now lol, crazy how small it is.